The Windy City!

I’ve just got back from one of our newest destinations…Chicago! I think we operated the 5th flight there, so of course none of us had been before and we were very happy to be going. We flew out on the 777-200 which is great, as it means less passengers for us 😀

The flight took around 13 hours and 45 minutes. After clearing customs and collecting our bags, we waited for our bus to pick us up and drove around an hour to our hotel, which is handily located right in the centre. 

After a quick shower and change, pretty much all of us met downstairs to go and find somewhere to eat.

We walked past the Trump tower, which is like a mini Burj Khalifa!

 We made our way to the Navy Pier, which was located a short walk from our hotel. 

 The views over Lake Michigan looking back to the city were lovely. 

It had started to drizzle a little bit by this time but I hadn’t thought to bring my umbrella with me, so we decided we needed to find somewhere dry to eat soon!

 After much deliberating, over 2 hours of walking (don’t even ask!) and all of us getting very frustrated with some of the crew who didn’t like the look of any of the places we chose, we finally found a chain restaurant called Grand Lux Cafe. Once all 9 of us were seated we were then told we couldn’t even have a glass of wine with dinner as we didn’t have our passports with us and they wouldn’t accept any other form of ID! 

I had some kind of berry juice instead which was tasty, and some pasta that was so spicy that I couldn’t manage more than a mouthful!

After dinner the pouring rain had luckily died down a bit, so we strolled back to the hotel enjoying the lit up city.

The river looked very pretty with all of the buildings surrounding it lit up!

After a much needed nights’ sleep and a tasty breakfast, I met up with one of the girls, Alina from the Ukraine.

We got the concierge to circle a few of the things to see on our map, and headed out to our first stop, The Bean!

Cloud Gate, aka The Bean, is located in Millenium Park, just a stone’s throw from our hotel.

Not long after entering the park we found it! As it was still relatively early (around 9:30) it wasn’t too busy.

We walked underneath and found our reflections in the metal. It was pretty awesome!

We walked past the Great Lawn, which had a stage at the end which I’m guessing is where they hold concerts sometimes.

We then decided to go and find the Buckingham Fountain. On our way we walked past the Art Institute of Chicago, which had a queue snaking halfway down the road and it wasn’t even open yet!

Buckingham Fountain is in Grant Park, and it’s actually one of the largest fountains in the world.

We got a coffee from a little cafe next to the fountain ($1.50! Probably why it tasted so disgusting!) and sat on a little bench next to the water. Chicago is located right by Lake Michigan so we watched the boats go by for a while until we got a bit chilly and it started to drizzle a bit.

Our original plan had been to take an architectural river cruise, however with the rain getting stronger every minute and the temperature dropping, we decided to wait until next time. Luckily, both of us are flying to Chicago together again next week, so be prepared for lots more photos if the weather is nicer!

We ended up in the theatre district and slowly made our way to Michegan Ave, also known as the Magnificent Mile.

I wanted to get some traditional deep dish pizza for lunch, but in both of the places I went to they told me the wait was 45 minutes – 1 hour! As our wake-up call was looming, I settled on some lunch in the hotel, before all too soon it was time to get ready to leave.

The flight wasn’t full on the way back, and I had to drink numerous coffees to stop myself from falling asleep in my jumpseat! All of our passengers were fast asleep, spread out across the seats, so we pretty much had nothing to do in-between our services! Finally after 13 and a quarter hours, we landed back into Dubai. 

Chicago, I’ll be back!